


Before Winter Takes Us

by ElectricGhouls



Category: Kings (TV 2009)
Genre: Angst, Homophobic Language, M/M, So much angst seriously, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 01:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3362069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectricGhouls/pseuds/ElectricGhouls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Numb it with ice,” he hears Silas hiss and by the time Jack has chased Joseph’s warmth from his own blood, he is a blizzard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Winter Takes Us

“Numb it with ice,” he hears Silas hiss, teeth click clacking together like the grinding of rusty machinery and Jack has to pull himself away so he doesn’t get caught between the gears.

\--

The Godling twitches a finger and Jack is dizzy and disoriented but he still thinks he can see blackness seeping into his golden clothes, marring him permanently where he was polished before. This isn’t the first time he has saved Jack’s life, isn’t the first time he’s thought nothing of it and asked nothing in return. Jack feels a debt owed to him as long as the Pacific and it makes him sneer- he never asked for this. He never asked for this. Shepherd thinks he is saving him but really he is damning him to trudge on another day where he will have to numb and bury and pretend and die a slower, far more painful death. Jack has prayed by his bedside like a schoolboy for death, on his knees when thoughts of Joseph ripped him up from the inside, and he isn’t naïve enough to believe that God would care, even if he could hear him.

But here he is, God’s cherished one, gambling his own purity away to save a sinner’s life and he doesn’t realize that for all his good intentions he is stealing the only peace Jack can ever know and Jack could kill him. Right now Jack is clutching at his own chest and heaving deep breaths and despite all reason he is _relieved_ to be alive and that makes him more ashamed of himself than anything before. A man like Jack doesn’t deserve life, isn’t good enough to be able to wield it into something useful, and he definitely doesn’t deserve it at the hands of a good man like David and Jack could kill him. He really could.

\--

Jack doesn’t know how he keeps his composure. He watches the CD with his mother and feels a wave of anger and a _pang_ of fear that he’ll never dare to admit and decides that he’ll have to break it off for real with Joseph. Maybe it was a bad idea to go see him again.

Then his mother tells him that he killed himself and Jack’s vision swims. He continues lying like it’s easy as breathing and hopes his voice doesn’t crack when he asks “He’s dead?” like he’s waiting for his mother to laugh and say _of course not, why would you think something like that?_ His legs still work and his lungs aren’t collapsing and he hates himself more than anything for that. Later, he thinks, later. He can feel Joseph’s blood dripping from his palms and he doesn’t dare to look down because then he would draw his mother’s attention to how he has stained this expensive carpet with red.

Later, when he is sitting with a glass of whiskey in his hand, he remembers Joseph saying that he is too brave to be such a coward. He hates Joseph- _he loves Joseph_ \- for seeing good in him where it doesn’t exist, the fool, and he hates himself for not being someone worthy of perceived goodness. Joseph’s faith in him ruins Jack even from beyond the grave and Jack wants to howl and rage at the sky and plead for God to take him instead because he was never _worthy_. He wishes he’d never been born and lies to the world in the same breath, pretends never to have known Joseph, and his grip has tightened enough that the glass has shattered and embedded itself into his hand. He sees his own blood instead of Joseph’s for the first time since he heard and the pain is momentarily distracting from all his other suffering and he wants to _weep_ with gratitude for this small solace, as undeserving as he is and he would thank God if God wasn’t dead.

If Silas wanted Jack to numb his insides with ice, then Joseph’s funeral has left his heart a pile of soot. Jack tries to dig into himself, tries to find the same goodness that Joseph saw in him. He sees nothing at all. The Reverend looks him in the eye with more understanding than Jack knows how to handle and Jack still lies, but he isn’t fooling anybody.

He gets home and his mother is exasperated with his foolishness before he says “He loved me. And I loved him,” which, at last, dislodges the lead from his throat. He doesn’t say that he still loves him because he is not allowed to love someone he has killed but he settles for past tense. He asks if that’s fair and he doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

The truth is intoxicating on his tongue and now that he’s said it he doesn’t want to stop. His mother slaps him and he is too tired to be hurt, too hurt to feel pain. She tries to blow away his grief with a pardon, proclaiming it a misjudgement of character. He looks her in the eye. His mother has never been fragile or vulnerable, always arranging the pieces in the game from behind the scenes and never taking credit. He has inherited some of her cleverness, he thinks, but not all of it. Not nearly all of it. He has never considered her weak and he doesn’t now, either, but he speaks softly all the same. “This is who I am,” he says and he prays with all that he is that Joseph can rest a little easier for it.

\--

Living without Joseph has made him cold.

Jack follows his uncle’s influence and works with Silas and lies and plots and schemes and deceives. He wants the crown because he is supposed to and without that want he is nothing. He has no purpose and no desire and so he pursues the one thrust upon him. It turns out that he didn’t need to try very hard after all- over time spindly frost has covered him like thin spiderwebs and it should be a matter of time before it gets to his chest.

He is in court, trying the Golden Boy for something he didn’t do because Silas feels threatened by him ( _oh, but that’s delicious in ways he never thought possible_ ) and this is the most fun he’s had in a while. This is his playground- he can spin any tale he takes a fancy to and it’s his talent to get people to believe it. He isn’t surprised that Silas enlisted his help.

He hears “guilty” and the game changes. He doesn’t understand and he does understand all at once and it makes him roll his eyes as much as it makes him want to sob. God’s chosen would do anything at all, including putting himself in front of a firing squad for a crime he didn’t commit, if he thought it would help the people that didn’t even believe in him. That kind of self-sacrifice reminds Jack of someone and suddenly he can’t do this anymore.

Silas throws the word ‘faggot’ at him like a grenade and everything inside Jack slows. The ice stops climbing, the blood stops surging and for the smallest of moments, he loses his breath. The title of _prince_ crumbles for the sham it really was, ashes at Jack’s feet that he can put into a jar and _bury bury bury_ and he thinks- finally. Something that fits.

\--

Jack has everything and nothing that he wanted; he has lost the love of everyone that mattered to him ( _his sister’s eyes, full of accusation and hurt as he ordered the gun pointed at her is what he will be shown again and again, he thinks, when hell finally claims him_ ), he is a puppet to his uncle- not even a king in his own right-, the crown does not want him, and neither does God (the last of which is woefully unsurprising). He kills anyone who disagrees with him.

“Numb it with ice,” he hears Silas hiss and by the time Jack has chased Joseph’s warmth from his own blood, he is a blizzard.

Silas comes back. The bastard is impossible to kill even though he’s not God’s best guy anymore but Jack still fights it the best he can. He wants to yell _isn’t this what you wanted?!_ but there’s no heat in the words. He doesn’t have that anymore.

He gets through the defences, of course he does, and William escapes, trying to take Jack in tow. He entertains the thought. In the end he knows that’s all it is, though, and he turns back. There’s nothing left for him now. He could go with William and plot and scheme some more but he’s just so _tired_ and what is the point? Jack inhales and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

\--

“I’m ready,” Jack drawls, his eyes empty and his mouth twisted. He makes his usual show of arrogance, half-hearted at best now because everything spilling out of his mouth is truth that has been sitting inside him like hot coals.

“Good,” Silas says, simple as anything and Jack remembers a similar ‘good’ being uttered from his mother’s mouth except then it had bounced around his head, fracturing his skull from the inside where now it just makes him still. He sees Silas reach for the gun and for a moment he is more afraid for his sister than he has ever been because this is a man that can shoot his own son point blank without hesitation and he feels helpless before he remembers that he has _never_ been Silas’ son and that Michelle is good and he is not.

Silas points the gun at his forehead and he thinks he can hear yelling but he slides his eyes shut because he refuses to let this be his last sight. He summons up his memory of Joseph’s hopeful face- easy because it has been imprinted into his memory with a scorching iron, a reward for loving him or a punishment for killing him, he can’t tell the difference- and pleads forgiveness to his ghost with his last thoughts. He hears the gun click, part of the machine, and he would thank God if God wasn’t-

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first ever fic, i hope you enjoyed it! please review if you have the time


End file.
